In the mobile device industry, it is common practice for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to release a new mobile device and provide subsequent updates, such as to fix bugs in an initial firmware or provide additional features or security fixes as part of a new firmware. A mobile network operator (MNO) that provides mobile device services (such as, but not limited to, providing mobile devices to customers and/or providing wireless communication services for mobile devices) may receive a software update, such as a firmware update, from an OEM and perform OTA (over-the-air) distribution to all mobile devices meeting criteria for its installation (for example, a firmware update may be specific to a particular make and model of mobile device).
However, in this process of delivering software updates, the MNO is not able to test inoperability of the software update with all existing software on the market. For an enterprise customer with large numbers of mobile devices, which may have specific software packages or used for specific purposes, conventional techniques for delivering OEM- or MNO-provided software updates can create and/or expose software incompatibilities or other problems that interfere the customer's use of affected devices. However, conventional techniques for OTA software delivery fail to provide useful controls for mitigating such issues.
Additionally, an customer associated with many mobile devices may have particular software and/or configurations that the customer may wish to install on and/or update on a number of mobile devices. Although larger customers may be able to establish their own infrastructure for distributing and managing such installations and updates, many customers lack the time, skills, or resources to do so.